


"A Room of Our Own": Women Writing Women in Fan and Slash Fiction

by Ithiliana



Series: Ithiliana's Academic Presentations [1]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Academic Presentation, F/F, F/M, Gen, International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, Meta, Written in 2009
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25920658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ithiliana/pseuds/Ithiliana
Summary: In this paper, I analyze Jane Land's 1987 novel,Demeter. Briefly described inTextual Poachers, the novel "puts Uhura and Chapel in command of an all-female landing party on a voyage to a lesbian separatist space colony; their adventures not only provide these characters with a chance to demonstrate their professional competency but also to question the patriarchal focus of the original series and its male protagonists" (167).Land's novel is described by Jenkins as an example of what he calls refocalization: fan stories which shift the focus of the source text to center the canonical minor characters. The same pattern can be seen in the media tie-in novels by women authors who make Uhura or Chapel or an original female character the major focus of the story. Jenkins discusses the novel briefly since his purpose is not a full analysis of single texts but an overall theory of fan production.In contrast, my presentation analyzes the novel, situating it in the context of second wave feminism, 1970s feminist utopias (which often featured a lesbian separatist culture), and considering it in the context of scholarly constructions of Trek fandom during the pre-internet period.
Relationships: Christine Chapel/Spock
Series: Ithiliana's Academic Presentations [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884643
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	"A Room of Our Own": Women Writing Women in Fan and Slash Fiction

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Demeter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/621881) by [Jane Land (Open_Doors)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Open_Doors/pseuds/Jane%20Land). 



> Background: I retired from my academic job in June 2020 with a whole lot of WIPS (academic and fic projects, and often academic projects on fic!), so I've decided to post the presentations that never got developed into a larger projects (and aren't likely to be developed at this point) as meta in AO3. These presentations will be grouped in a series although they will deal with a variety of topics.
> 
> I am editing them lightly (correcting surface errors or syntax errors that I failed to notice the first time around); other than those edits, they are the same as the papers I presented in the past. 
> 
> I'm listing the original presentation information, along with my passport name, which I've always been fairly open about, because, RETIRED! 
> 
> I also worked with the author and the OTW Open Doors Project to upload the novel on the archive: [ Jane Land](https://archiveofourown.org/works/621881/chapters/1122413), the author of _Demeter_. I highly recommend reading this novel, and Land's other novel featuring Chapel/Spock, _Kista_
> 
> Presentation: Reid, Robin Anne. "'A Room of Our Own:' Women Writing Women in Fan and Slash Fiction." The 30th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Orlando, FL, March 18-22, 2009.

The larger project of which this presentation is a part began with a paper on the implications of the development and growth of homoerotic slash about female characters during the past fifteen years. Scholarship tends to focus on the m/m slash, and the existence of women writing about women in fandom is generally ignored. However, fanfic featuring female characters came soon after the first m/m slash publication. A 1977 story featured Uhura and Chapel. "Kismet" by Dani Morin, appeared three years after Diane Marchant's Kirk/Spock story, "A Fragment Out of Time" (1974) which is generally agreed to be one of the earliest if not the earliest published slash fiction in Trek fandom. 

In this project, I am interested not only in analyzing a 1987 fanfiction novel focusing primarily on Uhura and Chapel but also in questioning whether the ways scholarship has analyzed m/m slash fiction while ignoring the other genres of fan fic (het and gen, heterosexual romances and general stories, i.e. stories not focusing on relationships) is useful for the women-authored, women-centered fictions, whether gen, het, slash or, as is the case with my chosen text this year, a blend. 

In her 1987 novel, _Demeter_ , Jane Land sets out explore the question of what it might mean if sexism still existed in the Federation (Introduction). Her exploration is set in a canonical plot: the Enterprise is tasked to deal with a new and instantly addictive drug, called nirvana which turns out to be coming from a colony planet. When the Enterprise arrives at a SB, after an encounter with two freighters which attacked them unprovoked, they are told of a distress call from a colony that is linked to the drug. The twist is that Demeter, the colony, was founded fifty years earlier by lesbian feminist separatists from Earth; they request only female personnel come to the planet. Kirk must put together an all-female away team and remain behind on the ship, along with Spock, McCoy, Sulu, and all the other male crew [PAUSE TO GLOAT]. 

A sub-plot involves the complexities of balancing work, marriage, and family in Star Fleet, focusing on Chapel and Spock's ten-year marriage in the Vulcan tradition. Chapel has only recently returned to the ship after spending years with their two children. This relationship is only one of a number of relationships that are explored by Land in deftly interwoven scenes, including those between women of the Enterprise and Demeter colony. While most of the relationships focus on friendship, at one point, Rahab, an engineer on Demeter expresses sexual interest in Keiko, a security officer on the ship. The way this novel handles the variety of relationships, including the range of discussions among women, are what have made me consider whether it is useful to separate women-centered fics into gen/het/slash genres of traditional fanfic scholarship. However, no matter what sub-genre of fanfiction we're talking about, or even what fandom, the scholarship has mostly ignored women-centered stories. 

**Scholarship**

Although scholars focus on the women fans who invented fanfiction, the major questions tend to be about m/m slash: why women write it; what the existence of the fics mean in terms of gender relations; what relation slash has to other genres such as romance or pornography or both; what relationships between women are fostered in the fic community. All perfectly useful questions. But even while current scholarship is beginning to move away from an exclusive focus on fan fic to include work on other productions (costuming, vidding, role playing games, etc.), women-centered stories continue to be ignored. 

"Women" in fandom scholarship as constructed in the texts are primarily straight and white. The single monograph most devoted to women fans is Camille Bacon-Smith's 1992 _Enterprising Women_. Focused on one pre-internet fandom ( _Star Trek_ ), Bacon-Smith argues that hurt/comfort is the most important genre, and privileges slash writers' construction of androgynous men. Hurt/comfort are stories about a man experiencing pain or injury and being comforted by another, often leading to the start of a homoerotic relationship. 

Alternately, Constance Penley, in her 1997 discussion of slash in _NASA/TREK_ , reads the predominance of male bodies that she sees representing "real" ("manly" rather than androgynous) men in Trek fan fiction as revealing women's alienation from our own bodies (although tellingly, in her usage, it is "alienation from **their** own bodies"--my emphasis). In the 1992 _Textual Poachers_ , Henry Jenkins does briefly mention the "smaller (but growing) number of lesbian stories," envisioning this type of reciprocal relationship occurring between two female characters (197). 

I note his use of "lesbian" as the modifier as opposed to using "slash" which, when applied to male/male relationships, were rarely, if ever, called "gay stories." Current debates in fandom over "gay literature" and "slash" have begun to address that question). A good deal of work remains to be done on the neglected female-centered stories in the female space(s) of fan fiction. 

Easier access to fanfiction via the internet, as well as the growing number of f/f slash communities on LiveJournal reveals a richness of women-centered works. Sheenagh Pugh who deals with internet fandom and fic in her 2005 monograph, _The Democratic Genre_ , discusses the growth of femslash within context of the appearance of more interesting female characters in more shows (and more than one female per show), as well as within socio-political context: some writers write for a political reason: "Some female femslash writers are themselves gay or bisexual and are marking out a territory" (109), or say they write women way to redress lack of attention paid to female characters in the past.

While part of my larger project deals with f/f slash on the internet, in this paper I consider the question of how a pre-internet fan novel constructs women protagonists, women characters, and especially all women-settings. 

My larger question is how women writing in earlier decades integrated the questions being debated by feminists in the larger culture around them into their fic, whether or not the story is categorized as gen, het, or slash. This issue needs to be addressed, despite the difficulty of finding primary documents. I do not know how typical Land's novel is. Getting my hands on it was a difficult process (especially for one not used to archival research). 

Henry Jenkins was the source for my first awareness of _Demeter_ : he briefly describes it in _Textual Poachers_. Google led me to a copy of the novel in the University of Iowa Horvat collection; the archivist helped me track down Land (to get permission for a copy to be made), and I wrote a small internal grant to pay for the copying. 

Jenkins discusses Land's novel as part of the category of "refocalization" stories: tales which shift the perspective to focus on a minor character; given the prevalence of male protagonists in media texts of the period, refocalization stories can easily focus on female characters. Refocalization stories need not be slash, but they can raise the question of what a different axis of analysis would be, if fan scholarship focuses on the creation of women characters across the genre boundaries of gen, het, and slash. 

Refocalization is not specific to fanfic either: there is a similar pattern in the Trek media tie-in novels by women authors who make Uhura or Chapel or an original female character a major focus of the story. My favorites include original series Trek novels by Margaret Wander Bonanno, Diane Carey, Diane Duane, Janet Kagan, Majliss Larson, and Melinda Snodgrass. A later incarnation of this project could pair tie-in novels and fan fic about women characters in Trek! 

Jenkins discusses Land's novel briefly since his purpose is not a full analysis of single texts but an overall theory of fan production and creativity. In this essay, I do a close reading and place Jane Land's novel within the context of second wave feminism, specifically: the creation of the 1970s feminist separatist utopias; Adrienne Rich's concepts of compulsory heterosexuality and the "lesbian continuum;" conflicts between straight and lesbian feminists which led to divisions along political and gender lines; the radical feminist rhetoric recasting lesbianism as a political choice. Within the novel's plot and character interactions, Land presents a range of feminist arguments about the situation of women in patriarchal cultures and what ought to be done, including the complicated relationship between the political and the personal.

**_Demeter_ **

Kirk assembles an away team consisting of Uhura (in command), Chapel, and four more characters (I think they are all original): Keiko Ichigawa (security, and martial arts specialist/award winner), Grace Dawson (referred to as a med tech and as a nurse at different times); T'Nila (a Vulcan healer who applied to the Enterprise at her husband's request but arrived after he is killed in the first attack on the ship), and Thelit (an Andorian, also a med-tech). While only Chapel is currently married, the others all identify as heterosexual: Keiko begins a relationship with Sulu before the away team goes on the mission; T'Nila is a widow; Dawson says a number of times that same-sex relationships are a perversion of God's natural laws, and Thelit was divorced by her husband when she made the decision to leave Andor and join Starfleet as well as being disowned by her family and disenfranchised of citizenship.

Chapel is the primary protagonist/POV character, but Land deftly presents multiple point of view through a third person omniscient perspective with quick scene shifts that convey the pacing of the show. POV characters include all the members of the away team; Sappho, the head of the council on Demeter, Kirk and Spock, and the leaders of the drug smuggling ring, a human and a Tellarite. Uhura is placed in command of the expedition, and Chapel is the Chief Medical Officer since she is now a doctor. 

The friendship she and Chapel have is made clear from the start, especially as they commiserate with each other over the short skirts of the uniforms of twenty years earlier, the relative youth of many of their crewmates, and discuss the mission, Chapel's marriage, and Uhura's decision to remain unmarried but have a variety of sexual partners. The younger women on the team are lower in rank and come from at least four different cultures (Earth, Federation colony, Andor, Vulcan). 

The differences among the women on the away team are emphasized from the start. After the briefing, Uhura asks them to stay after the men leave to discuss their response to the mission, to Demeter. They come from cultures with different attitudes about gender. On Vulcan, women are equal of anybody except must be "bondmate" to husbands (subordinate to male biological needs) which T'Nila argues is logical in the meeting although she later comes to question the logic. Chapel is bonded to Spock, and their conflicts during the course of the story case an interesting light on the practice of Vulcan bondmates compared to the theory. 

Andor is a warrior culture with oppressive gender hierarchy (only eleven women Andorians in Starfleet, all of whom are disowned/disenfranchised). Earth prides itself on its egalitarianism (much like the United States during the time of the original show), but Spock considers that neither Earth nor the Federation as an institution are particularly egalitarian. Dawson's home colony was established by a religious fundamentalist group. 

The women disagree with each other about the women of Demeter and about lesbian separatism. Soon after the meeting, readers see Chapel, Spock, Uhura, and Kirk eating dinner. Their friendly interaction turns into a heated discussion about lesbian separatism and gender inequalities. Uhura says:

> All of us in the landing party, when we talked among ourselves about Demeter, we didn't agree at all, except in one basic assumption. We all agreed that men hold the balance of power over women in our cultures. Whether we thought it was good or bad, logical or not, we all accepted it as fact (59).

Jim first dismisses her assessment as "being a little paranoid," but he does reflect, later, while he is relegated to staying on the ship, on his unconscious tendency to treat women in his crew differently from the men: and he acts on his awareness. As his senior women officers pointed out, in the Federation, male crew who perform well are moved around to learn more areas of the ship; the women who do well tend to be relegated to one area, thus not gaining the depth of experience that would suit those who are interested in/qualified for command that the men have. Thus, the women in actual high command are few because of institutional bias.

The away team arrive on Demeter and meet Lilith, the thirteen year old daughter of Sappho (the colony leader for that season) and Astarte (a physician although a later conversation makes it clear that she had not attended professional medical schools, referencing the feminist debate on medical institutions controlled by men, with a history going back to the midwives who were excluded from formal training. 

The names of the women colonists (about 400 in the colony, fifty years after settlement) all come from mythic or historical sources: Demeter (Dr. Juanita Alvarez, the geneticist whose work made blending ova possible); Sappho (the lesbian poet) Rahab (an engineer, whose name is that of the Old Testament woman, possibly prostitute, who hid Israelite spies in Jericho). 

There are at least three generations of colonists on Demeter: the oldest are the survivors of the group of women who first left Earth. The second, adult women, all under the age of 50, (Sappho, Astarte, Rahab) were the first generation who were born on the planet and raised by women who had been raised in the cultures of Earth. The third generation are their children: Lilith, and the others. Lilith is an important minor character, interacting with the Enterprise crew without fear, not being afraid of men, resisting Dawson's attempt to proselytize. 

The colonists brought books from Earth including, as we learn later in scenes where Dawson tries to proselytize Lilith, the Christian Bible, but also other texts. Lilith tells Dawson that she (Lilith) will read the Bible if Grace reads "our" books: _The Second Sex_ , _Against Our Will_ , _Womanpower_ , _Without our Chains_. The first two titles are considered major works of second wave Anglo-American feminism, written by Simone de Beauvoir and Susan Brownmiller. Laura Schlesinger is the author of the third, and I cannot find information on the fourth. 

The away team and the colonists must work together, aided by the crew remaining on the ship, to complete three tasks: to destroy the automated factory behind the shield; discover the area of the problem in the ova blending process caused by the shield radiation, and work on an antidote for the drug nirvana. While they need to beam down heavier equipment to break open the shield and more up to date medical technology to help identify the area of the problem in the ova bonding process and study the native plant to create the antidote, those tasks go fairly easily. 

The plant is worth studying because it is a mild stimulant in its natural form (the Enterprise crew are offered it as a drink) and one component can help treat brain tumor, a component that the Federation currently has to synthesize in an expensive process. But the leaders of the drug smuggling ring arrive at the planet: they are coming to pick up the current batch of refined drug and have learned of the distress call and the presence of the Enterprise. They decoy the ship away, and the human leader (described by all as incredibly handsome--blonde and blue-eyed--and the son of a British lord who controls a wealthy corporation) decides to destroy the colony. Wanting the chance to rape and brutalize women, he overrules his Tellarite partner's wish for a quiet exit. 

The away team are attacked as well as the colonists; Lilith is raped (the scene is not described; the survivors of the attack discover what happened afterwards); others are killed or injured. The away team are separated from each other, but in the company of different groups of the colonists. Earlier conflicts between the women (both the colonists and the crewmembers) around questions of cultural differences, the supremacy of men, the relative autonomy of women within a patriarchy compared to an all-female colony, must be set aside as the women fight for their lives, and then fight to save the lives of injured comrades. One group (including Thelit and Keiko) are caught at the drug factory; another (Chapel, Uhura, T'Nila, and Dawson) are attacked in the medical lab. 

The Enterprise returns in time to help the women defeat the drug smuggling crew, prompted by Kirk's command intuition and Spock's awareness through his bond with Chapel that something has gone wrong on the planet. After the final confrontation, the women who have refused to meet or speak to men agree to have their injured treated on the Enterprise, and diplomatic negotiations are opened. 

In the more personal plots, Keiko turns down Rahab's offer of a relationship; Christine and Spock re-evaluate their marital bond, and Thelit decides to stay on Demeter. The women on the away team receive commendations, and Kirk has reassigned crew to new area to give women a chance to take on a wider range of responsibilities. 

Land's novel is not a lesbian separatist utopia; the colony of Demeter, though a refuge for some at one time, will continue to be at risk as long as the possibility of exploiting the native plant for drugs exist. There will be open interaction with the Federation in the future. The plot, pacing, and characterizations, as well as a number of allusions to key episodes (including the one with Janice Lester), are congruent with canon while the shift in focus to women's relationships, women's conversations, and women's decisions as they face sexism which did exist in the show (and in the culture at the time of the show) reflects an engagement with feminist ideas. 

Most of the scholarship on fandom does not ask whether or not feminisms exists within fandom. I do not know if Land considered/considers herself a feminist at the time she wrote the novel; however, I would argue there is no need for fans to identify themselves as feminists in order to engage with cultural conflicts over gender through their fiction, and I see Land integrating feminist ideas in an overt and interesting way in her novel.

**Bibliography**

Bacon-Smith, Camille. 1992. _Enterprising women: Television fandom and the creation of popular myth _. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.__

__\---. 2000. _Science fiction culture. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.__ _

___Halberstam, Judith. 1998. _Female masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.__ _ _

____\---. 2005. _In a queer time and place: Transgender bodies, subcultural lives_. New York: New York Univ. Press._ _ _ _

____Hills, Matt. 2002. _Fan cultures_. London: Routledge._ _ _ _

____Jenkins, Henry. 1992. _Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture_. New York: Routledge._ _ _ _

____Land, Jane. _Demeter_. 1987. Larchmont, NY: Self-published._ _ _ _

____Penley, Constance. 1997._ NASA/Trek: Popular science and sex in America_. New York: Verso._ _

__Russ, Joanna. 1985. "Pornography by women, for women, with love." In _Magic mommas, trembling sisters, Puritans and perverts: Feminist essays_ , 79–99. Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press.  
http://www.totse.com/en/erotica/erotic_fiction_o_to_p/pornogra.html (accessed September 29, 2005)._ _

__Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1985. _Between men: English literature and male homosocial desire_. New York: Columbia Univ. Press._ _

__\---. 1990. _Epistemology of the closet_. Berkley: Univ. of California Press. 1990._ _


End file.
